May’s preps might have been a little obsessive. I am one of those people that likes to learn something new–and master it–before moving on to the next thing. May’s preps (in addition to making the usual stockpile purchases) have been almost exclusively focused on gardening, tomatoes mostly, and on my new food dehydrator.

I have decided that gardening is about one-half learned and about one-half luck and mother nature, and I am severely behind the learning curve. I’ve also discovered that rodents have teeth sharp enough to cut through chicken wire to get into my delicate young blueberry bush. Luckily I caught it early on and have since replaced the caging with a thick grade of plastic fencing. On a positive note, we have already harvested the first of our cilantro and lettuce and replanted more.

The other steep learning curve has been with the tomatoes. The seedlings did not survive the cats, so we went to the hardware store and randomly picked six tomato plants and started them in buckets. Random is bad. A few weeks into the project I finally decided to look up the varieties we had purchased and I discovered that four of the six plants would grow up to ten feet tall and produce tomatoes between one and two pounds. Oops. Thus they will require tall, sturdy stakes and some extreme caging structures. So we built ridiculously tall tomato cage/planters (and probably spent too much money). The second thing, about the tomato plants, is that they are really sensitive and tricky; they are susceptible to too much sun or water and are prone to bugs. Every couple of days I am out there hand picking off bugs, spritzing neem oil, and suckering off (trimming unwanted new shoots). I would sincerely appreciate any advice/suggestions as my ultra-urban gardening neighbors only grow flowers!

My second obsession of the month is my new food dehydrator. After packing up our first few months of food stores (beans, pasta, rice, etc.) we decided to try another approach to food storage. Our food stores weigh a lot and would be difficult to lug if we were bugging out. Plus if we are in a longer term bug-in, say in a power outage situation (snowmagedon anyone?), beans take significant time to soak and cook. This would dwindle our fuel supply quickly. So what if we had homemade, family-sized dehydrated meals stored? Like a backpacker’s meal, only family sized and not store-bought. They would take up less space, require less preparation time and be more transportable (if needed). Also, my family just plain does not like beans and I have to find more creative quick and easy ways to use them beyond simple beans and rice. I have found about 15 dehydrated meal recipes, and have started dehydrating some of the ingredients to make meals. The idea is that I will prepare, then vacuum seal these meals in mason jars (short-term), and my family will try them over the next several months to see which they like best and which need adjustments. Ultimately, we will put the “approved recipes” into mylar bags with oxy absorbers for longer term, portable family meal storage. You can see the jars in the photo, each card has the directions on the back and a rating of quick, medium or long for cooking time.

You can pretty much dehydrate ANYthing and it will take up much less room in your cabinets, whether stored in mason jars or mylar. I am currently dehydrating cooked beans (the canned kind or cooked dried ones and then drying again in the dehydrator).These can be left as beans or ground into powder and added to the meals to sneak in the protein (the same with carrots which my family doesn’t really like either). They come out crunchier than the original, but are lighter and take less time to cook. I also dehydrate rice every time we have any left over from a meal. You can even dehydrate chicken breasts and lean ground beef, though we have not started this yet. I will say that the downside to the dehydrator is that it makes for some intensely smelly days here at home depending on what is drying. It also requires some prep work and occasionally some minor blanching/cooking of the food prior to dehydrating (potatoes especially or they turn black). But so far I am really enjoying the results and look forward to sampling the recipes.

What did you do to prep this month?